Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Yearly Goals

I figured I'm about due for another check-in on my goals for the year. Here we go:

1) Write every day
Of the 219 days in 2008, I've written on all but 32 for a 85.3% rate. I've managed to increase from 81% in March. Not too bad, but certainly not every day. Since I've missed days, I can never get up to 100%. However, if I don't miss another day for the rest of the year I can get it up to 91%. That's what I'm shooting for.

2) Organize my iTunes
Back in March I was up to 22 playlists from five. Now I'm up to 31 playlists. Those new playlists have helped, but the biggest steps I've made in music organization is through rating my songs. I've rated a large number of my songs which allows me to quickly and easily make smart playlists that I can bump songs in and out of simply by changing the rating. I've also gone through and added metadata to a lot of my songs that don't have that info which allows for more smart playlist creation. I've still got some work to do to get everything categorized, but the progress has been enough to make sure that I can listen to exactly what I want to listen to when I want to listen to it.

4) Write and direct a sketch show
I've made some progress on this but not much. I've finally got some sketches going but it's not coming along very well. Plus, I've got another writing project on which I've been focusing most of my writing effort.

5) Take a writing class
Nope. Failed so far.

6) Paint the condo
Dee and I have been looking at paint colors for each of the rooms and we're discussing whether we want to do it ourselves or hire someone. Once summer is over we should have time to get this all sorted out.

7) Organize my hard drive
I've been good about filing things where they need to go and there's not anything left to clean up. However, I have begun using Evernote to keep track of all of my notes, todo lists and webclips which allows me to keep everything organized all in one place that is also synced to the web. Plus, I'm now using Scrivener for my writing projects. It allows me to keep all the files I need in one place on the project I'm working on.

8) Continue to get my finances in order
I have continued to use the financial software to monitor and manage our spending. Unfortunately, we're still not great at reducing our expenses. We don't pinch as many pennies as we should. However, we are a month away from paying off our wedding and we've done a very good job of paying down the rest of our debt. We're not debt-free but we're approaching that goal. We've also done a good job of saving as we both contribute to our company retirement plans and we also have a personal savings account with an above average interest rate that we automatically deposit to every month. Plus, I got a raise and immediately increased the amount of money we put into that automatic deposit each month.

I'm very pleased with the progress I've made on my goals. I knew going in that #4 would be the toughest to accomplish because I don't want to put up a show just to put up a show. I won't stage a show of sub-par material and if I just don't write anything that is good enough, it won't happen. I still have plenty of time and I'm still plugging away.